


Boldly Going

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Almost Dying, Gen, Introspection, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-28 18:48:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8458915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: Kirk finally has some time to reflect on past mistakes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set around Into Darkness. Originally posted to Livejournal in 2013.

There comes a moment in every Starfleet officer's career when they look death in the face and they make a choice. They balance so many conflicting decisions in such a small amount of time that the pressures of command have never seemed more overwhelming. The needs of the many over the needs of the few.

It had been a neat phrase of Spock's that Kirk had taken more to heart than he'd realised. Because that's all it had been, words. A Vulcan's justification for doing what he wanted; embracing technicalities was only the half of it.

But Pike's words had reinforced them and in all the running (literally most of the time) from one crisis to the next, Kirk hadn't had a moment to think. Hadn't allowed himself a moment to think, about the lessons he could learn. He'd wanted vengeance but Spock's logic had penetrated through that, speaking to the overwhelming part of him that couldn't act without knowing the truth. Blindly rushing in was something of a trademark of his, but he could never sit back and watch a man be condemned to death without trial. Not only was that betraying all that the Academy had taught him, but his mother's love and his father's desperate act of bravery.

Before he'd been responsible for himself and his crew. Now he was responsible for his crew _and_ himself. It was a subtle distinction and one that Pike would have recognised. That Pike never had the chance to properly show him what it was to be a captain would haunt Kirk for the rest of his days. Pike, who'd been more than a father, more than a mentor, the rock that Kirk hadn't realised he'd needed. Why was it only when everything was taken away from you, that you realised just what you had?

Kirk's thoughts seemed as slow as his progress as he dragged himself to the glass door protecting the rest of the ship from the radiation that was eating away at him. This was how he was going to do it? How he was going to do better than his father?

“I'm sorry,” he muttered into the silent room, the words barely registering above the strained beating of his heart.

Saving his crew, his family, that was only part of it. In many ways it was a penance, for having got his crew into the mess in the first place. He should have listened to Scotty, Spock, Pike. He should have thought with his head, not his heart. Or at least weighed up his options better. But then wasn't that why he had Spock and the others in the first place? They were his better angels. Now if he only had the chance to turn back time and make it all right again.

He'd always seen himself as invincible, deep down, that slither of insanity he'd seen in himself reflected back by Khan. Untouchable. His very birth had marked him out as something beyond the norm and now, thanks to Pike, he was starting to see that he could live up to the image of his father. Surpass it even.

Could have. None of that was true any more.

Cold. He felt so cold. And then Spock was there and not even half of the words he wanted to say were spilling forth and then darkness fell. Darkness fell for a very long time.

* * * * *

Kirk's relationship with his mother had always been strained. It wasn't as if she blamed him for his father's death, it wasn't that. It wasn't even that he had lived and his father had died. It was that expectation because of the way his father had died that Kirk himself had to be something extraordinary. Anything less wasn't acceptable. He'd learned early on that every time he got good grades, grades that any one would have been proud of, they were never good enough, there was always more that he could have achieved, distinctions he could have earned, extra credit he could have taken if only he'd applied himself more.

So he'd simply stopped applying himself.

The fact that the good grades kept on coming, because his brain burned bright even if he'd rather no one noticed, was even more of a source of irritation to his mother. And to his brother, who worked harder and gained less, but his brother was at least vocal about it. His mother just took more and more off world missions, buried her grief in her work and a second marriage that was just as much a disappointment as her second son.

But hers was still the first voice he focused on when he woke from his coma. Not that she was actually in the room with him, that would have probably proven too much for both of them. But the echo of her love, for him and his father, for a future that should have been, had pierced through his consciousness. His father and Pike's voices had followed soon after. His father's dying words recorded for posterity in Starfleet's databases, just waiting for his son to hack into them and listen. A secret he'd take beyond his dying day.

And then there was Bones. Treating him just as he always had, just as Kirk hoped he always would. Fondness beneath a deep layer of gruffness; hiding, badly, the fact that he cared deeply for his friends and crew. The most motley of families.

He hadn't expected Spock. Well, he hadn't expected at all, so anything that came after this was a bonus he was going to grab with both hands. But something long buried uncurled inside him. He didn't have much, but he did have his friends. His crew. His beautiful, beautiful ship. Khan wasn't the only one whose demons worried at the heart of the Federation. But Kirk was going to make damn sure that the crew members who'd lost their lives on ship and on shore were never forgotten. That the ideals that they were all supposed to uphold weren't just words recited once and then laid aside along with their dress uniforms.

Starfleet was better than that. _He_ was better than that.

Time to prove it.


End file.
